New cybersecurity study finds about 40% of work emails are unwanted

A recent study by the cybersecurity company Hornetsecurity has found that 40.5% of business emails are unwanted. The Cybersecurity Report 2023, which examined over 25 billion business emails, emphasizes notable changes in cyber-attacks in 2022 and highlights the increasing dangers to email security and the need for vigilance in digital workplace interactions.

With 39.6% of all threats discovered being phishing emails, this attack method continues to be the most popular. Threat actors provided the following file types as payloads via email: Compared to last year’s 33.6%, 28% of threats are supplied as archive files (Zip, 7z, etc.), while HTML files have increased from 15.3% to 21% and DOC(X) has decreased from 4.8% to 12.7%.

Hornetsecurity CEO, Daniel Hofmann, said: “This year’s cyber security report shows the steady creep of threats into inboxes around the world. The rise in unwanted emails, now found to be nearly 41%, is putting email users and businesses at significant risk.

“What’s more, our analysis identified both the enduring risk and changing landscape of ransomware attacks – highlighting the need for businesses and their employees to be more vigilant than ever.”

Brand impersonation attacks continue to rise

However, cyber risks go beyond email and corporate messaging systems. Even on corporate social media, brand impersonation assaults are on the rise. LinkedIn now accounts for 22.4% of all detected global brand impersonation threats, up 3.5% from the previous year.

Cybercriminals can access company resources through social engineering by gathering job information from sites like LinkedIn. When receiving work emails, both those that are wanted and those that could be from malicious impersonators, organizations and their employees should always use caution.

WRITTEN BY

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